Author: Why Not

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Final Cut Pro, HDV and PowerBook G4

Take a PowerBook G4 1.67GHz, Canon Vixia HV30, Final Cut Pro 6.x and a few hours to spare. Capturing HDV clips is still possible to do on a 3-plus year old PowerBook G4. Well, an external FireWire 800 hard drive was also included in the work-flow.

MacBook Pro are much more powerful compared to any PowerBook G4, but it doesn’t make them completely obsolete. Consider that MacBook Pro has ExpressCard slot built-in and PowerBook G4 (15-inch and 17-inch models) have PC Card slot built-in. Many professional DVCPRO HD camcorders are using P2 Cards. An adapter is needed to import the content of those P2 Cards to a MacBook Pro as opposed to a PowerBook G4.

It has been 3 something years since the last 15-inch PowerBook G4 was released. It still is a great computer even though it’s lacking the proper ability to handle playback for higher definition videos. It still can import HDV movies just fine with a proper set-up.

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Adam Carolla and Tom Leykis Get The Pink Slips

Adam Carolla Show and Tom Leykis Show are cancelled. Head to 971freefm.com for the final Live Webcast.

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UPDATE:
Tom Leykis starts Thursday show with “Leykis 101” and he is planning to talk about the future of the show at 5PM Pacific Time. Leykis has a “no-cut contract” until 2011.

Starting Friday February 20th, 2009 at 05:00PM, KLSX as we know it will cease to exist. CBS Radio, the parent company of KLSX is set to throw away the FM Talk Radio format and replace it with Top 40 Radio.

Editorial:
Way to stand out from any other radio stations, CBS. Tag, end sarcasm.

This change of format left number of hosts losing their jobs, notably Adam Carolla and Tom Leykis. Along with Carolla and Leykis, the casualty list extends to Frosty Stilwell, Heidi Hamilton, Frank Kramer (all three from “Frosty, Heidi & Frank” show), Tim Conway Jr., and to some extent Danny Bonaduce.

CBS Radio feels the urge to “amp-up” their bottom line by switching to AMP-Radio format, all Top 40 all the time.

Editorial:
Let’s see how the FM Radio Market look like in Southern California. They are either playing the same “Top 40” junks or speaking something other than English. Congratulations CBS Radio, you’ve just blended in perfectly with everybody else. By the way, I can still listen to podcasts and there are great Internet Radio Station such as Pandora and Last FM. I’d like to mention that I have an extensive collection of music on my shelf, I’ll just listen to them instead of your “top” 40 radio.

Adam Carolla has announced that he’d be going the Leo Laporte way and producing his own podcast at www.adamcarolla.com.

Tom Leykis is expected to make announcement on his plan after being booted of CBS Radio. The Tom Leykis Show is popular with 24-to-54-year-old-men demographic.

Stay tuned.

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Darren Carter: Pictures from The Ice House

Darren Carter was recording his second CD at The Ice House Comedy Club in Pasadena on February 13th, 2009. Carter performed and recorded two sold out shows that cold and rainy night. Slated for June 2009 release, the yet untitled CD is now going into post productions. In the meantime, Carter will be performing at Funny Bone in Cincinnati, Ohio this weekend.

A few pictures of Darren Carter performing at The Ice House Comedy Club:

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Stay tuned for more news on Darren Carter new CD here and Darren Carter’s sites.

www.darrencarter.com
Darren Carter WordPress Blog
Darren Carter’s MySpace Page

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Laugh Factory Long Beach: My Funny Valentine

February 14th, 2009.

Laugh Factory Long Beach had two sold out shows on one of the most ridiculously made up day of the year, Valentine’s Day. Patrons were lining up outside the venue, waiting to be seated. Temperature was steadily dropping as the night rolled on. The first show was scheduled to go on 7:45 PM, and the host of the show didn’t get to take the stage an hour later. Darren Carter was one of the comics to perform on the first show. Having just recorded his second live CD the night before, Carter entertained the audience with his staple bits.

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The audience for the second show started lining up outside the venue shortly after the first show started. The second show started close to 11:00 PM, 85 minutes later than scheduled. Last minute line-up changes took some of the fans by surprise as some of them came to the show to see certain comics. Some fans expressed their disappointments when they found out the comic they came to see were seemingly replaced at the last minute. Jill-Michele Meleán was scheduled to host the second show only to be replaced by Frazer Smith without explanations. Meleán ended up hosting Midnight Show at Laugh Factory Hollywood.

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Overall, the night was a smashing success. The Valentine crowds were entertained and the venue had two huge sold out shows. There are a lot of wrinkles for Laugh Factory to iron out to make itself the destination for attraction in the Long Beach area. Laugh Factory Long Beach is no stranger to last minute line-up changes. On its grand opening show, many comics were advertised but ended up absent from the show.

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Panasonic HDC-SD100: Raw AVCHD Sample

Panasonic HDC-SD100 is the third Panasonic AVCHD Camcorder that I use. The first one is Panasonic HDC-SD5 and followed by Panasonic HDC-SD9.

I am really impressed with the video quality of HDC-SD5 while I have mixed results with HDC-SD9. It is possible that I have a defective unit, and I did send it back to Panasonic for evaluation and repair. Unfortunately nothing has changed since.

My HDC-SD9 unit has a really poor low light performance even compared to the HDC-SD5 unit. I am hoping that HDC-SD100 would perform better than HDC-SD9 under the same lighting.

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I tested Panasonic HDC-SD100 in-store, and recorded two videos on two different settings. The first one is recorded in 24p Digital Cinema Mode while the other is recorded in 60i mode. You can download the disk images below. Both disk images are in .iso format and zipped/compressed to save some disk space and bandwidth.

As of the date of this posting, iMovie ’09 will not import 24p AVCHD video from the camcorder or the disk.

I will be posting more videos recorded using Panasonic HDC-SD100 and some of the Raw AVCHD files.

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About iPhone Carrier Update

Apple pushes “iPhone Carrier Update” through iTunes sometimes late Friday Night, Feb 06th 2009.

What is it? TUAW talks about it a little bit.

This is what’s inside the “iPhone Carrier Update” for AT&T network (ATT_US.ipcc 32KB)

From carrier.strings

att_carrier_strings

The content corresponds with Carrier Services settings in the iPhone.

AT&T Services

Content of carrier.plist

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Some un-viewable PNG are also included.

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